Gregor Fischer/DPA/PA Images
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Western democracies seem trapped in the instantaneous, in which the 24/7 media conspire with every low-grade politician to obfuscate the serious with the trivial, while their systems slide into dysfunctionality.
By contrast, China is ruled by well-educated technocrats who have spent half their lives being stress-tested in a series of major appointments, whether in coastal or interior regions, or ones with ethno-religious tensions. The medium provinces are as populous as Spain. It is striking that the last British CGS, Lord Richards, regards President Xi as the last serious world statesman standing.1
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Xi’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy is the main element in his American-style ‘China Dream’. It spans Central Asia, the greater Middle East, and Europe, as well as many of China’s regional neighbours.
So far $1 trillion is being pumped into colossal infrastructure projects, on land and at sea, involving 65 countries. Some of OBOR is already a reality, for since September 2015, freight trains have been arriving in Duisburg and Hamburg from Zhenzou in China. The Hinkley Point Chinese-French nuclear plant is officially billed as an OBOR project, implying that the British may participate in what is a global showcase for Chinese technology.
By contrast, nothing much has come of an OBOR Economic Corridor linking Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar, and at the $600 million dry port of Khorgos, there is much bustle on the Chinese side, but little happening on the Kazakh one. Some elements of OBOR in central and southern Europe look like common or garden direct foreign investment, for example the Czech Republic’s Slavia Prague championship winners and some local media are now owned by the Chinese.2
OBOR is both an exercise in rebranding of earlier schemes, a showcase for Chinese ‘can do’ and a political system that makes long-termism possible, but it is also a domestic economic strategy with geopolitical effects.
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